The art and life of 'Fun Home' creator Alison Bechdel explored at UVM museum

Vermont Stage rehearses for its Oct. 4, 2017 opening of "Fun Home," based on Vermonter Alison Bechdel’s graphic memoir. The musical won a Tony after it opened on Broadway in 2015.
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Cartoonist Alison Bechdel tours preparations for “Self-Confessed! The Inappropriately Intimate Comics of Alison Bechdel,” an exhibit of her work at the University of Vermont’s Fleming Museum in Burlington on Friday, January 19, 2018.(Photo11: GLENN RUSSELL/FREE PRESS)Buy Photo

The Fleming Museum of Art is about to display what might be the oldest existing piece of artwork by Alison Bechdel. The Bolton illustrator of the graphic novels “Fun Home” and “Are You My Mother?” made a drawing at age 6 with the heading “Alison kepp out.”

The artwork on construction paper wasn’t a case of young Alison telling family members to stay away from her belongings. Rather, she explains, it’s the four-legged ant in the drawing telling young Alison to stay out of its anthill.

There’s no way one of Bechdel’s current illustrations would have a mistake like “kepp out” – Bechdel describes her work method now as “a lot of fussing and fretting” – but the existence of the long-ago drawing does reveal an essential element of Bechdel’s character.

“Self-Confessed! The Inappropriately Intimate Comics of Alison Bechdel,” an exhibit at the University of Vermont’s Fleming Museum. Seen in Burlington on Friday, January 19, 2018.(Photo11: GLENN RUSSELL/FREE PRESS)

For that, the Fleming Museum is thankful. That hoarding tendency promises to make the museum’s soon-to-open exhibition, “Self-Confessed: The Inappropriately Intimate Comics of Alison Bechdel,” as complete as it is.

“We found this very strong theme of Alison as her own archivist,” said Andrea Rosen, curator for the University of Vermont museum and co-curator of “Self-Confessed!” The exhibition begins Tuesday at the Fleming Museum and runs through May 20.

“Self-Confessed!” covers the range of Bechdel’s career from that childhood drawing right up to her hot-off-the-press illustrated journal entries at age 57. Examples of her early work include a folder titled “An Odd, Strange and Curious Collection of Alison Bechdel’s Works” compiled when she was 12. Those writings and art reflect interests that endure in her life, such as mountain climbing and sports. (Her next book, about her lifelong relationship with fitness, is due out in 2020.)

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Cartoonist Alison Bechdel tours preparations for “Self-Confessed! The Inappropriately Intimate Comics of Alison Bechdel,” an exhibit of her work at the University of Vermont’s Fleming Museum in Burlington on Friday, January 19, 2018.(Photo11: GLENN RUSSELL/FREE PRESS)

Much of the exhibition, which Bechdel said is her first official career retrospective, covers “Dykes to Watch Out For,” the landmark comic she illustrated for 25 years until its hiatus in 2008. As Bechdel and Rosen walked through the museum Friday afternoon looking at works that will go up on the East Gallery’s walls, Rosen pointed out that some of the panels show the development of national issues such as marriage equality.

“That’s great, I didn’t know you were doing that,” Bechdel told Rosen while standing on a ladder overlooking the installation-in-progress.

Visitors can read “Are You My Mother?” and “Fun Home” at the exhibit and encounter a section exploring what Rosen called “the strange afterlife of ‘Fun Home,’” a book that details Bechdel’s father’s closeted homosexuality and death at the same time Bechdel came out as lesbian. “Fun Home” became a Broadway show that won the Tony Award for best musical in 2015, and “Self-Confessed!” will include video clips of the production and a model of the show’s set by designer David Zinn.

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“Self-Confessed! The Inappropriately Intimate Comics of Alison Bechdel,” an exhibit at the University of Vermont’s Fleming Museum. Seen in Burlington on Friday, January 19, 2018.(Photo11: GLENN RUSSELL/FREE PRESS)

Rare works on display not only include Bechdel’s childhood drawings but more-recent, barely-seen illustrations. Large-scale black-line paintings shown at art walks on Pine Street in Burlington about a decade ago reveal a more-relaxed style than Bechdel’s typically detailed work.

Rosen said “Self-Confessed!” has value on multiple levels. “Certainly it will introduce new audiences to Alison’s work,” she said, and will show those who know Bechdel’s output some pieces they haven’t seen. The exhibit showcasing Bechdel’s autobiographical story lines is a change of pace for the Fleming, Rosen said, as the museum normally displays art without a narrative element.

“It challenges the format of a museum,” Rosen said.

“It’s also a history lesson,” Bechdel said. The exhibit shows “Dykes to Watch Out For” representing what Bechdel called a “minor sub-cultural niche” in the pre-digital age, but in a modern-day context in a digital world where gay and lesbian topics have become mainstream.

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Cartoonist Alison Bechdel tours preparations for “Self-Confessed! The Inappropriately Intimate Comics of Alison Bechdel,” an exhibit of her work at the University of Vermont’s Fleming Museum in Burlington on Friday, January 19, 2018.(Photo11: GLENN RUSSELL/FREE PRESS)

“I feel like young gay kids don’t have any idea what it was like 25, 30 years ago,” Bechdel said. She contributed memorabilia to the exhibition from that era of activism, including a 1987 T-shirt from the Midwest Lesbian Gay Student Conference in Minnesota.

That activism comes out in many of the works on display at the exhibit. “The current through these comics is the sense of assimilation,” Rosen said, “and inside or out, finding your community and finding love and acceptance in it.”

If you go

ADMISSION: $3-$10 museum admission, free for museum members; faculty, staff and students of UVM, Champlain College and the Community College of Vermont; and children 6 and under. 656-0750, www.uvm.edu/~fleming/

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“Self-Confessed! The Inappropriately Intimate Comics of Alison Bechdel,” an exhibit at the University of Vermont’s Fleming Museum. Seen in Burlington on Friday, January 19, 2018.(Photo11: GLENN RUSSELL/FREE PRESS)